Talk:Zoë Rivas/@comment-25290273-20150110221609/@comment-25290273-20150111194222
I am pleased to see that you have now taken to quoting entire blocks of my arguments verbatim (which would diminish, if not entirely defeat the likelihood that you might yet againt equivocate my statements in this thread as you have before), and glad to find that you understand that we agree on ONE point (that you have stated that you sympathize Zoe), but it remains extremely obvious that we are in stark, irreconcilable disagreement about 1. what "justifying" means and entails and 2. how we are able to INFER that justification has taken place. Toward the beginning of my comment, I will address relatively minor counter points you've made against me in your reply. Toward the end of my comment, I will explain what "justification" means (according to sound definitions that exist outside YOUR conception of it), and how this definition has led me to arrive at the conclusion that you have justified Zoe in spite of the claim that you haven't. Firstly, my purpose in citing the definition of the word "apologism" was to demonstrate that I was using the word correctly when I initially claimed that "the defenses attempting to absolve Zoe" on the page were "apologist" defenses, and that my description legitimately applied to those defenses in spite of your initial suggestion that they didn't apply that because they weren't sound ("weren't apologisms nor permissive justifications"). I included that definition to start off with an establishment of the notion that what I said was both correct and relevant. It was not an actual supplement to my position, and it should not be taken as an element that expresses anything more than my desire to prove that I was using the word right and accurately applying it to something that was relevant. THEREFORE, the assertion that it "misses the point" is TRUE if you choose to (incorrectly) identify this one, miserable definition as a fundamental point in the rest of my position, but it is FALSE if you choose to (correctly) adopt the attitude that it was a trivial addition included for the trivial purpose of what I indicated above. Secondly, you haven't let go of that pesky, erroneous misconception that an apologism of anything necessarily absolves the thing from negative implications. Per the definition of the word, an "apologism" of something is a statement that consists of a justification and a justification only. There is no added subtext therein stipulating that the apologism has to be SUCCESSFUL in making a certain thing appear blameless (in contrast to what we could say of an "absolution"), the BARE definition of "apologism" only requires that an attempt to extenuate something be made, and that an excuse (or justification) be evident in that attempt to extenuate. If only you understood the idea that an apologism is a BROAD TOOL of defense, and that once you make implications about something (like the causes of Zoe's behavior) you commit yourself to every subsequent consequence that logically follows from your original implication, we would have been able to come to an agreement on this matter long before, and you would not have needed to bother writing (equally long-winded) refutations of my material. I never argued that you were propagating "some unapplicable legal defense on Zoe's behalf." Instead, what I DID argue was that "the courts" would not agree with the assertion that an "individual experiencing similar trauma" is legally or morally exempt from the culpability of committing unwarranted, UNRELATED misdeeds (ie. distributing illegal images for money, jeopardizing his co-conspirators, and falsely incriminating others when the libel is likely to cause damage to an individual's livelihood) just because the person has experienced emotional or even physical trauma in the past. I'' was the one who made the assertion that that DEFENSE was shit ''should it have been the case that you were you actually agreeing with it, and I was expressing doubt that there was any likeliness that a court would agree with that principle for anyone who tried to use it. HOWEVER, in light of the statements you'd made before we reached that point, I WILL maintain that you did create the impression that Zoe's behavior was justified (in spite of your claim that you did not, initially). Only this time, I will qualify my assertion with a HUGELY LIBERATING provision: that you have done it (through no intentional design of your own, since you have insisted that you didn't TRULY justify her in your mind and didn't mean to sound as though you did), but merely failed to realize that the content and implications of what you were saying justified her themselves, FOR YOU, in the process. I will digress from that point briefly to go off on a tangent, to point out that what you said (about the judges "throwing the cases out" in light of the Youth Criminal Justice Act) doesn't actually disconfirm what I'' said (about the unlikeliness of a judge actually buying into the bullshit principle of a self-serving justification). I don't want you to get defensive about this statement and allege that I am assigning yet another non-existent charge to your name, so I want you to understand that I am ''not necessarily claiming that you that you were trying to disconfirm my statement by mentioning that they would "throw it out." However, I WILL say that I thought it was noteworthy to point out that your observation provides a useful premise in support of my claim that the courts wouldn't honor a case predicated on the "wrong justifies wrong" principle. To elucidate, if a court THROWS A CASE OUT, it AUTOMATICALLY (and unsurprisingly) indicates that they have not honored it. So mentioning that they would "throw it out" adds nothing to the general tally of "refutations" you are attempting to accumulate against me here (even though the length of your comment completely makes it clear that you're not REALLY attempting to accumulate a whole list of points to counter me, at all...of course). Switching back to my claim purporting that you have (in fact), justified Zoe's behavior (whether you meant to do it or not), I acknowledge that I am obligated to point out that making this claim leaves JUST enough room for you to disavow it as something you sincerely believe. > For example, it is VERY possible (and exceedingly likely, based on the insistence you've shown throughout your comment) that you do not ACTUALLY believe that Zoe is justified IN PRINCIPLE. However, it leaves entirely no room for you to assert that you DIDN'T inadvertently justify Zoe. > Here, I'll explain that my "inadvertent" claim doesn't leave any room for you to deny "inadvertently" justifying Zoe because it is demonstrably evident that you created this impression as a result of the things that you featured in your reasoning from the start and how you made use of them, in direct opposition to what you NOW purport you had suggested about Zoe's behavior at an earlier time. You may squint at me now, and spit the question "Well, how can this be?" through clenched teeth. In response, I would then draw your attention to the fact that, when you go so far as to claim that a serious emotional injury "rewires your brain circuits in ways that affect your perception of relationships," you are ADDITIONALLY saying that you believe it is "right or reasonable" for an individual to behave "atrociously" as a logical consequence of asserting that something negative (and rather powerful) is infuencing her behavior. *(As a parenthetical, I will clarify that the emphasis in the phrase "right or reasonable" is on the "reasonable," since you have stated that you do not believe it is "right," and since I have no way of proving what you really, MORALLY believe in your own mind).* Further support for the claim that your phraseology (if not you, yourself) has indicated that you believed it was "reasonable" for Zoe to behave atrociously materializes in the fact that you point out she is "unstable," when the mere reference to her instability in your original wording COUPLED WITH AN ACCOMPANYING ASSERTION THAT IT AFFECTED HER BEHAVIOR together inferred that you considered this "instability" to be an extenuating element sufficiently able to explain why it is reasonable for her to behave the way she does. So as a result of this (though I shouldn't need to point it out after all this elaboration), it is safe (and reasonable) for us to conclude that, by making reference to elements that EXTENUATE Zoe (to illustrate how her behavior was "not without EXPLANATION" <- or "REASON"), you effectively proceed to imply that her decision to act "atrociously" was WITHIN REASON (once again, because her psychological disrepair EXTENUATED her). If your position was entirely devoid of elements that justified Zoe's behavior, MERELY INDICATIVE of the fact that you "understood" and "sympathized with" her as you say it's only supposed to do, it would not have contained references to the phenomenology of psychological reprogramming, nor would it have contained references to the "instabiility" of "rewired" individuals like Zoe in ways that suggest that any of those elements extenuates her. The implication that she acts out because an emotional injury has "rewired her brain circuits" is an observation that suggests resulting behavior "does not fall outside the scope of reason" on the basis that the serious damage has been suffered, and it is difficult to remain impervious to it. Your reference to her instability is another attempt to suggest that her behavior "does not venture outside of what is permitted by reason" per the reasoning that an unstable person is bound to screw up because their sense of judgment is impaired. The Google definition for "justify" is "to show or prove to be right or REASONABLE." You are "showing or proving that Zoe's behavior is REASONABLE" when you make reference to conditions that extenuate her because an extenuation of something demarcates the boundary between what a person thinks can be reasonably defended in a certain matter, and what a person does not think can be reasonably defended in a certain matter. If you can identify the ONE WORD that ALL OF THESE OBSERVATIONS have in common, agree that my use of it accurately represents the nature of these observations, and agree that my use of it corresponds to the definition of the word, then you have effectively discovered where and how you have "inadvertently justified" her behavior (in light of the claim you made that you didn't justify her in principle). Our radically differing ideas of what "justify" means and entails have been the elements that have prevented us from agreeing with each other in this matter, hitherto. But now that I have clarified the definition and the tackled the question of whether you did what you claim you haven't, there should be no more controversy over whether or not you've actually justified Zoe (inadvertently or not). I am very aware that you may reject the entire sequence of "logic" that I have proposed here, denouncing it as nothing more than a hysterical combination of glaringly overblown though "creative" straw men, "equivocations," "logical fallacies," "misinterpretations," and the like, but I will declare that if you are inclined to do that, you are not allowed to assert that my sequence (the one that claims that you have justified Zoe by acknowledging her behavior and DRAWING THE CONNECTION that certain conditions known to affect an individual's behavior are affecting hers adversely, which unavoidably entails the implication that you are extenuating and thus "proving or showing Zoe's behavior to be reasonable" as a logical consequence) is flawed unless you then substantiate YOUR claim with a solid counter-sequence that dismantles and invalidates mine. As well, it has not escaped my attention that you "preface" your comments with a nominal acknowledgement of "not justifying Zoe," but I have learned to investigate the reasoning of what someone says IN CONCERT WITH what they actually say, in order to determine whether or not they are offering cogent positions. I have adopted this behavior because I have discovered that the REASONING matters more, and the REASONING is the element which conclusively reveals a person's true coordinates in the map of where they reside on an issue). So, it follows that if I have determined that the reasoning of someone's statement doesn't support his statement, I would be justified in either choosing to disregard any resulting assertions made in light of the acknowledgement of their original "disclaimer," or challenging them for it directly. Since it happens to be the case that I have discerned that your reasoning of not justifying Zoe did not support your your claims of not justifying Zoe (in the same previous comments where you took to "prefacing" what you thought about her), I have willfully disregarded such "preface statements" and opted instead to PROVE that THE OPPOSITE was supported by your logic. As a closing comment on the debate we've had IN ITSELF, perhaps you are right when you propose that we share similar outlooks on the same situation. But, as I see that you have noticed about everything I say (down to the very defintions I use), I am both very precise about what I say, and how I judge that others have articulated what they intend to say. I integrate definitions into my arguments as a way of demonstrating my dedication to forming and communicating accurate positions. If I were to identify the fundamental difference in the way we both approach the art of argumentation, I would say that the style I adopt is a bit more demanding (exhibiting an unrelenting preference for an emphasis on accuracy and clarity that cannot be satisfied until it is achieved by myself and delivered by others) more prescriptive to meaning (based on the fact that I am so pedantic ABOUT those qualities), and more (uncompromisingly) intolerant of even the slightest oversights in reasoning, than your style is. The majority of the issue that has caused friction between us is that your style of reasoning is more relaxed than what I am typically comfortable seeing from anyone, anywhere. On that note, I would like to say that I consider it an admirable quality to be as immovably obstinate over minute details (such as definition) as I've proven to be, and that my experiences in debate have taught me that it is imperative to be that way about definitions because they are often the rut in which the core discrepancies of two opposing viewpoints lie. As we have illustrated here, there is an importance to fixating over semantics: it lays the foundation of a debate that the two must have in common before proceeding to debate on behalf of either position of anything, in order to ensure that there are no misunderstandings in the nature of what they are debating about. As a result of detecting differing perceptions of the mere definition of a word (further down the line, sometime after the two parties have adopted the presumption that they are debating things by the same standards), two people holding otherwise identical positions may fail to realize that their positions are similar due to the misguided belief that a disagreement in this minor definition constitutes a disagreement in the entire narrative of their position.